We recast the Calabi flow in DeGiorgis language of minimizing movements. We establish the long time existence of minimizing movements for K-energy with arbitrary initial condition. Furthermore we establish some a priori regularity of these solutions, and that sufficiently regular minimizing movements are smooth solutions to Calabi flow.
In this paper, we discuss the general existence theory of Dirac-harmonic maps from closed surfaces via the heat flow for $alpha$-Dirac-harmonic maps and blow-up analysis. More precisely, given any initial map along which the Dirac operator has nontrivial minimal kernel, we first prove the short time existence of the heat flow for $alpha$-Dirac-harmonic maps. The obstacle to the global existence is the singular time when the kernel of the Dirac operator no longer stays minimal along the flow. In this case, the kernel may not be continuous even if the map is smooth with respect to time. To overcome this issue, we use the analyticity of the target manifold to obtain the density of the maps along which the Dirac operator has minimal kernel in the homotopy class of the given initial map. Then, when we arrive at the singular time, this density allows us to pick another map which has lower energy to restart the flow. Thus, we get a flow which may not be continuous at a set of isolated points. Furthermore, with the help of small energy regularity and blow-up analysis, we finally get the existence of nontrivial $alpha$-Dirac-harmonic maps ($alphageq1$) from closed surfaces. Moreover, if the target manifold does not admit any nontrivial harmonic sphere, then the map part stays in the same homotopy class as the given initial map.
We prove the longtime existence and convergence of the Calabi flow on toric Fano surfaces in a large family of Kahler classes where the class has positive extremal Hamiltonian potential and the initial Calabi energy is bounded by some constant. This is an extension of our previous work. We use the toric condition in a more essential way to rule out bubbles.
Hermitian, pluriclosed metrics with vanishing Bismut-Ricci form give a natural extension of Calabi-Yau metrics to the setting of complex, non-Kahler manifolds, and arise independently in mathematical physics. We reinterpret this condition in terms of the Hermitian-Einstein equation on an associated holomorphic Courant algebroid, and thus refer to solutions as Bismut Hermitian-Einstein. This implies Mumford-Takemoto slope stability obstructions, and using these we exhibit infinitely many topologically distinct complex manifolds in every dimension with vanishing first Chern class which do not admit Bismut Hermitian-Einstein metrics. This reformulation also leads to a new description of pluriclosed flow in terms of Hermitian metrics on holomorphic Courant algebroids, implying new global existence results, in particular on all complex non-Kahler surfaces of nonnegative Kodaira dimension. On complex manifolds which admit Bismut-flat metrics we show global existence and convergence of pluriclosed flow to a Bismut-flat metric, which in turn gives a classification of generalized Kahler structures on these spaces.
In this paper, we consider the indefinite scalar curvature problem on $R^n$. We propose new conditions on the prescribing scalar curvature function such that the scalar curvature problem on $R^n$ (similarly, on $S^n$) has at least one solution. The key observation in our proof is that we use the bifurcation method to get a large solution and then after establishing the Harnack inequality for solutions near the critical points of the prescribed scalar curvature and taking limit, we find the nontrivial positive solution to the indefinite scalar curvature problem.
We consider the formation of singularities along the Calabi flow with the assumption of the uniform Sobolev constant. In particular, on Kahler surface we show that any maximal bubble has to be a scalar flat ALE Kahler metric. In some certain classes on toric Fano surface, the Sobolev constant is a priori bounded along the Calabi flow with small Calabi energy. Also we can show in certain case no maximal bubble can form along the flow, it follows that the curvature tensor is uniformly bounded and the flow exists for all time and converges to an extremal metric subsequently. To illustrate our results more clearly, we focus on an example on CP^2 blown up three points at generic position. Our result also implies existence of constant scalar curvature metrics on CP^2 blown up three points at generic position in the Kahler classes where the exceptional divisors have the same area.